


Calling All the People

by likethedirection



Series: Ladyverse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 09, Awkward Crush, Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Guess Who's Not Dead, Humor, Lady-centric, Men of Letters Bunker, Season/Series 09, accidentally coming out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethedirection/pseuds/likethedirection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with the bunker's magic Narnia door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calling All the People

**Author's Note:**

> Track 1: _Calling All the People_ , 4 Non Blondes
> 
> See bottom notes for cast list - as this series will include some ladies who were in only one episode or haven't shown up since early seasons, links to photos are included. 
> 
> Thanks to [ladyinabox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyinabox) for betaing this work!

It started with the bunker’s magic Narnia door.  Charlie may stop calling it that one day, if a day comes when it is no longer a magic Narnia door.

Technically, it started with Dean calling her up, sounding disturbingly gleeful, and asking her where she was.  And with her telling him, and with him saying, “Awesome.  Perfect.  I’ll be there in ten.”

Hours, that is.

It continued with Dean in her doorway with a paint can ten point five hours later, and with Charlie squeaking a whole lot and squeezing back when he bear-hugged her right off her feet, and with him tapping the Uhura pop-art poster on her closet door and telling her to take it down.  “Temporarily-- _temporarily_ ,” he assured her after she denounced him for blasphemy via arm-smack, and he held up the paint can, grinning.  “We’re gonna paint shit.”

“Okay, what?  Also, my landlord might kill me with lasers for this?  Also, _what?_ ”

“Hold this up for me, will ya?”  He gave her his phone, and she stared at the symbol on the screen until he shoulder-checked her, and she hip-checked him in retaliation, and he tweaked her glasses, and she flicked his ear, and he threatened her with the wet paintbrush and a _Hey_ and she huffed and held up the damn phone.

It got interesting when he painted the last details of the symbol and said something sort of Latin-y, and it flashed green for two seconds and then faded back to the paint.  Dean stepped back, studied the symbol, and then knocked on the closet door.

And something knocked back.

And Charlie maybe jumped eight feet in the air and maybe let out a _holyfrickingcrapbaskets_ and possibly flailed backwards in the general direction of behind-Dean-Winchester, but that wasn’t important because what.   _What._

“Easy, Charlie.”

“ _Deanwhatdidyoudo?!_ ”

Dean rubbed his ear.  “Wow.”

It got even more interesting when he approached the closet door, opened it a crack, and poked his head in.  When he leaned back, he was grinning, and he held out a hand.  “C’mere.”

Against her better judgement, she took his hand.

One step, two steps, and he opened the door.  “I’d tell you we’re not in Kansas anymore,” he guided her across the threshold while her eyes widened and widened, “but, uh.”

They stepped into another world.

Sort of.  Almost.  Close enough.  What they really stepped into was a room - a _room_ , a not-her-closet room, with sigils etched into the walls and woven into the carpets, a devil’s-trap under her feet, a nook in the corner with two cots and shelves of medical supplies, more shelves of ancient books, and couches and easy chairs and coffee tables and Sam Winchester, doing his standing-there-being-tall thing, smiling warmly at her with the same little-kid-excitement behind it that she’d seen in Dean, and.

Holy crap.

“Voilá,” Dean said, gesturing grandly at the room.  “Welcome back to the Batcave, kiddo.”

Holy _crap_.

“Charlie,” Sam chuckled, “you okay?”

It occurred to her that her eyes were possibly taking up half of her face, and that Dean’s hand-bones were possibly starting to creak.  She looked at Sam, looked at Dean, looked behind her through the door at her bedroom in Minnesota, looked slowly around the sigil-covered room.

She let go of Dean’s hand, turned on her heel, and walked back out.

Her apartment.  Minneapolis.  Five twenty-five square feet.  Untouched.  Inhale, exhale.

Back through the door.  Batcave.  Lebanon.  Ginormous.  Sam still watching with patient amusement, Dean waving and looking smug.

One foot back out.  Lean to the right, apartment.  Lean to the left, bunker.  She looked ridiculous, and her brain was exploding a little bit, and God, she was having a Tardis-moment.

She _got_ a _Tardis-moment_.

"We found it in the Men of Letters' notes," Sam said while she spun around to take in all the symbols that climbed up to the ceiling, in the middle of which was a glowing chandelier at the dead-center of another giant devil's-trap that stretched to all four walls.  "It reads like it's sort of an emergency escape hatch, in case things got ugly when they were out in the field?  We've been testing it all week."

"Minneapolis to Lebanon, though," Dean added.  "Longest trip yet.  Are you crying?"  
  
"Shush," Charlie snapped, waving him away.  "I'm having a moment in like eight of my fandoms right now.  Let me have this."  
  
Dean snorted, and Sam looked flatly at him.  "Really, Dean?  I wasn't going to tell her about how you _giggled_ the first time you tried it, but--"  
  
"You shut your lying mouth."  
  
"You totally giggle when you're geeking out," Charlie murmured, still distracted.  "So wait, how does this work?  No way is it permanent. Does it just last until you close the door? If we close it, am I stranded?  What if like five Men of Letters need to get back from different countries at the same time?  Details.  Research.  Gimme."  
  
Sam lit up like Christmas.  Dean rolled his eyes and went to get the beer.  
  
Coordinates, it turned out.  Latitude and longitude, woven into the incantation, and as long as the sigil on her closet door wasn't tampered with, then saying the same incantation with the same coordinates would open the way back to her place.  
  
Which was _so frick-frackin' cool_.  
  
Dean promised to teach her both sigil and incantation before the night was out, and added that he'd just driven out to test it with her because he’d been going stir-crazy in the bunker.  Sam's lifted eyebrow implied that it was really because Dean was her sappy, protective fake big brother who didn't want her trying it until he was sure it was safe.  She made a note to hug him long enough to make him squirm before she left.  
  
Which she could do.  Anytime.  And then come back, anytime.  
  
And now that they knew it could work from a decent distance, Sam said, they could see about getting sigils set up in all of their main haunts, and letting a select few more allies in on it.  
  
Allies, Charlie thought.  
  
Huh.

  
  
-

  
  
So it was that Charlie Bradbury, hacker, philanthropist, erstwhile Queen of Moondor, came to make a complete ass of herself in front of Jo Harvelle.  
  
The thing was...okay, the thing was.  Charlie read all of Carver Edlund's stuff back in the day.  She occasionally discussed this or that meta on the Supernatural forums, and she'd even dabbled in the fanfiction.  And while the storyline was pretty cool in an epic, scary, watching-a-slow-mo-helicopter-crash-plus-MAGIC! sort of way, it was the characters that mattered.  And the character that kept her reading the most - other than Bobby Singer, which she tried not to think about because it gave her conflicting and generally sad feelings - was Jo Harvelle.  

Badass, ball-busting, knife-collecting, beautiful Jo Harvelle.  Blonde-haired facekicker of the patriarchy.  Oh, she loved Jo.  When she’d gotten to the part with the hellhounds and the explosion and...all of that, she'd cried like a baby and needed to put the book down and be a tiny ball under the blankets for a while. Maybe sworn revenge on Carver Edlund and written several strongly-worded e-mails under various pseudonyms to get the point across.  Maybe spent a while after that crying into fix-it fics online in which the Harvelles walked out of that explosion and saved the Winchesters’ asses and rode off into the sunset, with vivid descriptions of how said sunset gleamed against Jo’s flowing golden locks like a resplendent and forgotten halo.

So maybe she had a little bit of a crush.  She was not ashamed of this.  She’d daresay she didn’t fully trust anyone who didn’t have a little bit of a crush on Jo.

What the Carver Edlund books had left out, however, was a very important word: “almost.”

Very important, because _apparently_ it was supposed to go before, “died.”

By the time Charlie was introduced to the magic Narnia door, the boys had long since cleared up that little oversight for her.  (That had been a good day.  Sam was good for flying tacklehugs because you could just sort of hang off of him, and he’d chuckle and wrap you up like a friendly Ent.)  But she’d just sort of assumed she would never actually meet either of the Harvelle women, because according to Dean, with the Roadhouse gone they were mostly in the wind.  The boys would get a call now and then with news, but not much more than that.

As a result, when Charlie yawned her way through the magic Narnia door, out of the Room of Requirement (she had no plans to call it otherwise, ever), and into the bunker kitchen for Dean’s Breakfast of Deliciousness like she’d taken to doing every Sunday morning (usually including a big sleepy hug for Dean, partly because she likes giving him hugs, partly because he’s a big softie when he gets to cook for people and sleepy hugs usually result in extra pancakes), it had taken her a second after her usual sleepy, “Morning, menfolk,” to quite notice that there was an extra human sitting on the counter.

A really freaking _pretty_ human, swinging her feet in big-ass combat boots to make a girl swoon, absently flipping a paring knife in her fingers, lifting her eyebrows at Dean as she tossed back her long blonde hair.

Oh.

“...Hi,” Charlie said, blinking like a bush baby, her cheek still smushed to Dean’s back, Iron Man snuggie slipping a little bit off her shoulder.

“Right, you guys haven’t met,” Dean said, flipping something over in the pan and gesturing with the spatula.  “Jo, Charlie.  Charlie, Jo.”

Oh, no.

Clearing her throat, Charlie stood up ramrod-straight and plastered on a no-of-course-I’m-not-running-in-circles-screaming-in-my-head smile.  “Hi.”

Perfect beautiful Jo’s mouth quirked up, and Charlie’s brain had to reboot before she could wonder if she’d said ‘hi’ already.  “Hey.”

“Hi,” Charlie replied, then bit her tongue because _oh my God stop saying hi_.  “Charlie,” she said instead, keenly aware that badass glorious Jo already knew that and was definitely getting almost the entire Marvel snuggie experience right now ( _don’t think about sharing the snuggie, don’t think about cuddling with Real Actual Jo Harvelle in the snuggie, do not taint the snuggie--_ ), and quickly added with a gesture at said snuggie and an awkward laugh, “a.k.a. Iron Man.”

Jo did a little silent-chuckle-huff thing, all cool and collected and amazing, and Dean snorted because he was a big jerk.  Charlie ignored him.  “I’ve...heard a lot about you,” she tried - a little lamely, but it had a subject and a verb and everything, so she awarded herself a point anyway.

“Same,” Jo said, pausing her knife-twirling to gesture at her with the tip.  “So you read all the books about these two losers, huh?”

Code Red, disaster, _abort_.

“Um,” Charlie said.  At the table, Sam’s mouth twitched suspiciously and he grew extremely interested in his coffee.

Jo was leaning forward and smiling a little, oh _gosh_ she was pretty, _damn it_.  “I’m in them, too, right?  Am I awesome?”

Dean snatched the paring knife back.  “No.”

“Lie.”  Jo darted out a hand to smack his, knocking the knife out of it and catching it in midair in one graceful swipe, and smugly kicked her feet.  “I’m way more awesome than you.  Charlie, tell him I’m awesome.”

“You’re awesome,” Charlie said faintly.  Which...was not what Jo had asked, _shit_ \--she turned to Dean and said, as matter-of-factly as she could, “She’s awesome.  Intelligent, interesting, mega-witty, and may I say, _political_.  Jo Harvelle took the hot-spunky-sidekick-chick trope and killed it with knives.  In a good way.”

Words, _words_.  Finally.  She’d missed them.

“Ha!” Jo barked, grinning at Dean big and cheeky while he rolled his eyes.  She pointed at him for emphasis.  “Fuckin’ _political_.”

“You want your damn shallots caramelized or not?”

She handed over the knife, sweetly batting her eyelashes.  He glared and whapped at her hip with the towel in his other hand.  “No asses on the counter.”

Jo rolled her eyes and slid off, leaning back on her elbows.  “Hold up.  The books say I’m hot?”

“Well, duh,” Charlie said.  Jo cocked her head, and Charlie tried not to gulp.  “I mean, obviously you are.  I mean.  Obviously.  I mean, not being a Creeper Joe or anything--er, you know, Joe with an ‘e,’ not--I just mean, in the books you’re super pretty.  And also in real life.  But it wasn’t the focal point of your character, which was awesome, because the focal point was that you were a badass who just happened to be, y’know.  Hot.”

“Jo, hey,” Sam interrupted, thank _God_ , “uh, it looks like everything’s about ready.  Why don't you go let your mom know she can head up?”

Jo regarded him, one eyebrow curving shrewdly upward.  “You’re scared to make her leave the shooting range when she’s got a gun.”

“Yeah,” he agreed immediately.  “Pretty much.”

“Ain’t getting me down there,” Dean muttered from the stove.

"And for some reason, the books are about you two," Jo sighed, earning a sheepish shrug from Sam and a finger-gun from Dean, who she cuffed in the head before pushing off the counter.

"You smack the chef, the chef gets your bacon!" Dean bit out after her.

Jo laughed, not breaking her stride.  "The hell he does!"

As soon as radiant magical Jo was around the corner and down the hall, Charlie mouthed an _Oh my God_ at herself and slumped into a chair by Sam, pulling her faceplate-hood as far over her head as it would go.  It slightly softened the _thunk_ of her forehead hitting the table.  Slightly.

“Wow,” Dean agreed.

“Dean,” Sam chided.

"What just happened?" Charlie asked weakly into the fabric.  "I think I blacked out.  Or maybe had a seizure.  Did I just have a seizure?"

"You didn't have a seizure."

"Well--"

" _Dean_."  A large hand patted her shoulder.  “It wasn’t that bad.  It was...endearing.”  Ugh, there was an _it_.

“I’m back in high school," she murmured miserably.  "I’m the bony kid in the big black 1UP shirt trying to talk to sexy Remy Davis from the girls’ lacrosse team.”  The Sam-hand awkwardly rubbed her back.  “I thought I’d blocked that day out.  I did not block it out.”

Something landed on the table by her head, and she pried herself up to eye-level with Spock the Pancake Face.  Complete with an extra helping of bacon forming a little Vulcan hand.  She looked at Dean in wonder.  “I get pity-Spock?”

“High school flashbacks always get pity-Spock,” he promised.  He didn’t run away when Charlie snagged him for a waist-hug.

“I love you,” she said.

“You love Spock,” he countered, rubbing her shoulder.

She hummed agreement.  “And pancakes.”

He gave her a one-armed squeeze.  “You’ll be fine, kiddo.”

“I know.”  She sighed, leaning her head on his hip and looking at Sam.  “Endearing?”

He nodded quickly.  “Oh, yeah.”

She pressed her lips together.  “Not the Creeper Joe part, though.”

Dean’s grimace was an audible thing.  “Yeah, that was pretty bad.  Funny, though.”

She groaned and thumped her head into Dean’s side, but at least he was softer than the table.

 

-

 

In related news, another perk of the magic Narnia door: instant stress and/or mortification relief.  It wasn’t any armored swordfight, but having a shooting range right through a magic door and down the stairs turned out to be pretty bitchin’.  Taking some me-time to shoot shit?  Instant picker-upper.

It was one such day, when Charlie was goggled and earmuffed and blasting _Knights of Cydonia_ and maybe pretending she was Black Widow a little bit, murmuring a smirking, _Do svidaniya, bitches_ , before each round, when she had her second close encounter of the Jo kind.

She caught Charlie in one of the rare and triumphant moments that the end of her round coincided with the end of the song, in the form of a muffled voice behind her saying...something.

Charlie whirled around mid-victory-jam, fumbled to pause her playlist, took in the sight of Jo (leaning against the doorframe in baggy flannel and tight jeans and _again_ with those damn life-ruining combat boots--) and quickly pulled off her earmuffs.  “Huh?”

Jo's eyes twinkled.  Actually freaking twinkled.  “I said, ‘Not bad.’  You haven’t missed yet.”

“Oh.”  Belatedly, she realized that Jo Harvelle had just complimented her.  “Er.  Thanks.  Is what I meant."  Natasha Romanov would totally not stammer.   _Be Natasha Romanov._  "I’m...sort of out of practice.  Hence, you know.”  She nodded at her empty pistol.  “Practicing.”

God, she hoped Jo hadn’t been standing there watching her swing her hair around during the headbang-y part of the song.

Jo nodded, pushing off the frame.  “Pretty good for out-of-practice.  How long you been shooting?”

Well.  “Are we counting or not counting House of the Dead?”

Jo’s face broke into a broad grin.  “Hell _yeah_ , we are.”

Just like that, the fluttery, nervy _something_ in Charlie's stomach calmed down (mostly), and she grinned back.  "Well, counting that, then...kind of forever?  But the actual shooting of actual things, not really that long.  Ranged weapons have never really been my fave, more of a melee girl.  Give me a longsword any day."

Jo's eyebrows flew up.  "Seriously?  You do swords?"

"Hells yeah," Charlie said, beaming.  "You’re talking to the queen.  Ever tried it?"

"I wish," Jo said.  "I can do knives, I can do guns.  My dad got me started on both of them.”   _William Anthony Harvelle, dead_ , Charlie’s brain provided.  “He was never into swords, though.  Practicality was kind of his thing.  I never picked it up after he died.”

Faced with the snap-decision of whether to focus on the ‘never picked it up’ or the ‘died,’ Charlie pushed her goggles up and hesitantly smiled.  “Wanna learn?”

Jo’s eyes lit up.

 

-

 

Suddenly, they had a Thing.

The Thing was this: Charlie and Jo and sometimes-Ellen would all faithfully show up on Sundays for Dean’s Breakfast of Deliciousness, and Charlie would nearly fall asleep hanging off Dean until the food was ready, and then the deliciousness would happen, and then Jo would grab the back of Charlie’s chair and say _Come on, come on, come on_ and down to the bunker’s old-timey workout room they would go.

They would each grab one of the practice swords from the equipment closet - because apparently the Men of Letters really had thought of everything - and they would face off.  And Charlie would win, but by a little bit less every time, and then she would coach.  Jo had a keen eye and zero fear, but she wasn’t used to moving as nimbly as she wanted to with a blade quite that big.  So, coaching.  At least, until the coaching turned to talking.

Not heavy talking; easy talking, like the tale of how nine-year-old Charlie begged for fencing lessons so she could be just like Sulu, and how Mom was so tickled that she signed her up the next day.  How every practice session turned into a quest, sometimes featuring Dad in the role of Smaug the Terrible, and how years later she switched from the foil to the longsword and dueled her way up to the Throne of Moondor.

Jo waited a beat, and when Charlie didn’t say anything more about her parents, she moved on.  Because she got it.

She got it, and Charlie got it, and so the talking was easy.  

Between parry and lunge, Jo recounted her cross-country adventures with her mom, griped about the dangers of locking two Harvelle women in a car for eight hours, and explained just where the heck they’d _been_.

“We’ve spent most of our time down south,” she said, dancing out of the way of a thrust and taking a swipe, pressing in when Charlie blocked.  “Garth got us in touch with this restaurant-owner who had a vampire situation a while back and decided she wanted in on the hunter life.  Or,” she grunted when Charlie ducked out of the stalemate, nearly tapping her out before she got back into a rhythm, “at least the knowledge.  She’s more about damage control.  Helping out the ones who, y’know, had their best friend come at them with fangs, or watched their brother try to eat their mom.  Wants to help them deal with it.”

“Huh.”  Charlie spun around and landed a tap on Jo’s arm, smirking at Jo’s groan before they got back in position.  “That’s not a half-bad idea.  In the books, the hunters always just...kind of forgot about them.”

“Right?”  Block, duck, footwork, footwork.  “So Mom’s been helping her get set up, and I’ve been scoping the territory.  There are some badass hunters down there.  This one chick, Tracy?  Kind of my hero right now.”

“Sweet,” Charlie said.  “More hunters are--stance, _stance_ , there we go--more hunters are better, right?”

“Usually,” Jo said, blocking a few strikes, halting but well-aimed, “if they’re not assholes.  Hunters get territorial, you know?  Lots of dick-measuring.”

Charlie shuddered through a parry.  “Gross.  So what, is this place down south going to be Roadhouse 2.0?”

“Nah.  Guidry’s is actually just the most recent one.  Garth has hooked us up with hunters in just about every region of the country, looking to do what Mom did with the Roadhouse,” Jo said, making a face when Charlie didn’t go for her feint.  “They need a safe place to meet, they call Mom, she helps them set one up.  I don’t know if this makes her a consultant now, or what, but it’s working for her.  She loved that restaurant, but she loves bossing people around more.”

“A woman after my own heart.”  Charlie threw up her blade just in time to block Jo’s, and Jo pushed, and Charlie pushed back.  “Have you,” she strained and dug her feet in, “have you considered the possibilities of,” _shit_ , Jo was strong, “of bringing hunter meeting-spots into the digital age?”

“English, Bradbury.”

“I mean-- _holy cow_ ,” Charlie finally broke away and got some distance, panting while Jo laughed breathlessly.  “I mean the internet.  Message boards, electronic communication, social media.  Lore database, searchable beastie-stats.  It’s not totally unprecedented, you know?  And it would save hella time on the research.”

“Awesome.  I have no idea how to do that.”

“I do,” Charlie said with a smile.  Jo started moving again, and Charlie moved with her, circling slowly.  “I could get Sam and Cas in on it.  Even Dean, if we bribe him.  And I can totally bribe him.”

Jo gave her a funny, sideways look that she couldn’t quite read.  “So,” she said slowly, casually, “how long you been dating Dean?”

Charlie’s brain screeched into a spin-out, and she barely squeezed out the “Whoa, _what?_ ” before Jo’s practice sword was knocking her off balance and her ass was hitting the floor.

“Ha!”

“Holy crap, _cheating_ , your victory is false.  Now, who’s dating what with the what?”

Jo shrugged, lowering her sword.  “It’s not a big deal.  I figured it wasn’t a secret or anything, since you hug him like every day and he actually looks happy about it.  Just curious.”

“Wow,” Charlie said, blinking rapidly.  “First of all, _so_ not into guys.”

Jo’s eyebrows climbed all the way up her forehead, and it occurred to Charlie that she had no idea how the Harvelles might feel about that.

“Furthermore,” she pushed on, trying not to stammer even though she was already having flashbacks of being laughed at by half the lacrosse team, “Dean is super awesome when he’s not in crisis-mode, don’t get me wrong, besties, but he’s totally my fake big brother and that would be some kind of fake-incest, and not even the sexy kind that I don’t read.  And if you’re super grossed out right now, I mean not about the fake incest, about, um.  Me?  Then maybe break it to me gently, because you were kind of my hero for like a chunk of my fandom life and if you were mean about it I’d be utterly destroyed, but know that I am open to respectful dialogue.  But maybe do it soon so I’ll stop talking.  Actually, I’ll stop talking anyway.  Done talking now.”

Charlie clamped her mouth shut, and Jo stared, and Charlie could have taken the damn ring to Mordor in the time it took for Jo to open her mouth.

“ _Damn_ , you can talk fast.”

Charlie swallowed hard.  “Uh-huh.”

“Are you gonna stand up, or should I sit down?  This is sort of weird.”

“Oh, y’know.  Whatever.”

Jo dropped down to sit across from her on the floor, elbows on her knees.  She reached out with her practice sword to knock over their water bottles and roll them over, and held Charlie’s out to her.  Numbly, Charlie took it.  Jo set her sword down, took a swig of her own water, and replaced the cap, wiping her mouth.  

“Hi,” she said, setting it down.  “I’m Jo, the girl that’s not grossed out and not about to punch you.”  She held out a hand.  “Breathe before you pass out.”

Charlie let out her breath, and sort of a laugh, because averting trauma always deserved a laugh.  “Charlie,” she said, her face hot but her shoulders relaxing.  “Genius, swordswoman, spaz.  Totally into boobs.  Certifiably not-creepy about it.”  Jo laughed, and they firmly shook hands.

Pulling back, Jo asked, “Do the guys know?”

“Oh, yeah,” Charlie said.  “I’m totally not in the closet - well okay, Dean painted the symbol on my closet door, so technically we're all in the closet, mazel tov - it’s just not part of my intro piece.”

“That makes sense,” Jo said, taking another drink and swinging the bottle idly between her fingers.  “It shouldn’t have to be.  Strangers don’t need to know your business.”

“Basically.  No need to blind the poor Muggles with my rainbow of inner awesome all at once.”

Jo smiled, but stayed quiet for a long beat.  Keeping hold of the bottle, she looked at the floor, then at Charlie, and asked with quiet puzzlement, “Your hero was me?  Really?”

Charlie blinked, realized that may have been one of the things that tumbled out of her mouth in her preemptive freak-out a minute ago, and took a fortifying gulp from her water bottle.  “If I say yes, am I already breaking my non-creepiness guarantee?”

Jo huffed a little and shook her head.  “I mean...why me?”  

“Is that a trick question, or..."

Jo fidgeted with the bottle, and it hit Charlie that this was what Jo looked like when she was nervous.  “Don’t get me wrong.  All things considered, my self-esteem kicks ass.  And I talk a good game with the guys, because they need to get their asses kicked by someone who isn’t _actually_ trying to kill them sometimes.  But, I mean, I could list off twenty better hunters than me without taking a breath.  I’m a college dropout with no skills except shooting and tending bar.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to get bailed out when things have gone bad.  In the scheme of things?”  She shook her head again.  “I’m barely even here.”

Charlie pressed her lips together, trying to figure out this new Jo, who could rattle off her insecurities without being ashamed of them, just stating them like D&D stats with an entirely neutral face.

“Okay, no weirdness intended here,” she finally decided on, hooking her hands under her knees, “but all that stuff?  Kind of the best part.”

Jo stared skeptically back.

“Okay, hear me out,” Charlie said, hands fluttering.  “Charlie Bradbury, circa 2005?  Totally lame.  Runaway with zero attachments, super-specialized interests that most people didn’t get, a hundred twenty pounds soaking wet.  Smart, yes.  College?  Not even a thing.  So I did what any self-respecting nerd would do and escaped into every world possible that wasn’t the one where everything sucked.  Enter the _Supernatural_ books.  And, you know, they were okay, they were fun.  Urban legends, monsters, quirky banter, it was solid lukewarm entertainment.”

She took a breath, allowed herself exactly one second to acknowledge how utterly _weird_ the fact of this conversation was, and pushed forward.  “Then they brought in _you_.  And at first I was just like, ‘Cool, finally some badass x-chromosomes up in this business.’  But then it got into all that other weird, vulnerable, messy _stuff_.  You were a hero, and you didn’t have to be made of adamantium to be that.  You still got angry about people you’d lost, you had an awkward crush, you felt like a freak when you tried to be normal - and you were _awesome_.”  

She caught Jo’s eye when she tried to look away.  “That mattered,” she said.  “To someone like me, that mattered a _lot_.”

The corner of Jo's mouth crept upward.  "That important, huh?"

"That important," Charlie promised, poking Jo's water bottle with the tip of her sword for emphasis, making it swing between Jo's fingers.

The little quirk turned into a grudging smile.  "All right, all right," Jo said, swinging the bottle again to knock the fake blade away.  "If it's for a good cause, I guess I'll just have to keep being a freak, then."

"You'd better.  You've already broken my heart once, missy."

Jo squinted for a second before seeming to realize, then lowered her eyes in something like gratitude.  "Show you the scars sometime,” she said.  “They're pretty gnarly."

Great, awesome, that was totally an image Charlie needed in her brain now that she was finally not-sucking around Jo Harvelle.  She just managed to catch the whimper in her throat in time to replace it with a grin.  "Badges of honor, and nothing less.”

Jo smirked.  "I'm thinking of getting 'em tattooed."

" _Dude._ "

"Uh-huh."

“Sam and Dean would _flip_.”

“Try my mom,” Jo grumbled, then paused and seemed to backpedal.  Grimaced.  “The books talked about the crush thing, huh?”

Charlie grimaced back.  “‘Fraid so.”

“A lot?”

“...No?” Charlie said, attempting an innocent smile.

Jo groaned, thumping the water bottle into her forehead and leaving it there.  “Oh God, you’re lying.”

“It wasn’t that bad!  I mean, okay, yeah, it was a thing, but it wasn’t a _thing_ , you know?”  Jo drew her knees up and made sort of a distraught-cat noise into the plastic, and Charlie awkwardly patted her foot, the only part of Jo that she could reach without trying way too hard.  “It didn’t make you any less awesome, and I mean, Dean is...Dean is _Dean_.  I mean.”

“Oh God, _shhh_ ,” Jo hissed, flapping a hand in Charlie’s general direction.  “I was young, I was dumb, I’m so over it, and now we’re done.”  She stood, finishing off her water and setting it aside.  “Let’s do something.”

Charlie lifted an eyebrow, bit back a call-out for totally changing the subject, bit back the sex joke she kind of wanted to make, made a mental note to tell Dean the sex joke later because he appreciated those, and stood with Jo.  “Round Two?  I’m game.”

“Nope.  My turn.”  Jo set her sword back in its place and faced Charlie, crossing her arms.  “I know you can do handguns.  How are you with shotguns?”

“I once wielded a machine gun against zombies in a dream that recurred like twenty times?"

“Not even the same gun.”

“Then, zilch.”

Jo grinned.  “Then it’s about time.”

And God help her, Charlie grinned back.

 

-

 

The Sunday Breakfast of Deliciousness is a team effort these days.

“Morning, menfolk and ladyfolk--wow.  How many plates this time?”

“Uhh, nine?  No, ten, Jody was gonna bring Alex.  Jo, less gawkin’, more choppin’.”

“How come Charlie never has to chop?”

“Because he knows my chopping inevitably turns into projectile warfare and I burn things by thinking about them.  Consistently.  Forever.”

She hip-bumps Jo as she passes, and Jo grins.  “So you can kill meals with your brain?”

Charlie grins back, _so_ glad Jo has come to love Charlie’s darlings of the sci-fi genre exactly as much as she ought to, and takes the plates to the table.  “No power in the ‘verse can stop it.”

Slowly, more and more members of Team Winchester have been coming out of the woodwork, wandering the bunker, bouncing off each other, lecturing the boys and hugging them and laughing with them and making them squirm.  Foot traffic in the halls is at an all-time high.  At every visit, there are more names and faces to learn.

Charlie has so many new heroes.

“Boy, you’re gonna put us all in the ground with all that sugar first thing in the morning.”

“Overruled.  Pancakes without chocolate chips are a _travesty_.  Cas, how’re those eggs lookin’?”

“Distinctly yellow.  I agree with Ellen, Dean.  Human bodies require a nutritional balance of--”

“Also overruled.”

It changes everything, having so many of the good guys so close.  It changes the boys more than anyone.  Dean’s shoulders relax, the corners of his eyes crinkle, and Charlie could swear that every time she turns around he’s giving a hug or patting a back or squeezing a shoulder, whether to their visitors or to the people he sees all the time.  Sam moves like he’s gotten his first good night’s sleep in a decade, and he sasses Dean mercilessly, and sometimes he even laughs out loud.  And when Dean and Sam change, everyone in their orbit changes with them.

“Well, look who decided to join us.”

“Coffee.”

“You know where to get it, shortstop.”

“Be nice to me.  Tablets poking my brain all night.”

“Missouri’s gonna be here in twenty to spoil you rotten.  ‘Til then, Prophets of the Lord get their own coffee.”

“Ugh.  I don’t like any of you.”

“Please,” Charlie says, ruffling Kevin’s hair while he makes grumbly noises and bats at her hand.  “You love me.”

“After Mario Kart yesterday, no, I do not.”

As he passes her, he hands her a folded page, and she briefly opens it to look it over.  It’s filled top to bottom, all information and credit card numbers and sigils and clues, and she gives him a curt nod and a thumbs-up, and he leans into her for a second in thanks and shuffles past her to the coffeemaker.  She re-folds the paper and sticks it in her pocket.

With this, she should be able to track down Linda Tran within the week.  Dead or alive.

“Hey.  That was Jody, said she’ll be here in five--is there going to be _any_ fruit in this meal?”

“You know, I feed all of you freeloaders out of the goodness of my heart, and I’m feeling real attacked right now--”

Charlie latches on with both arms around his front and squeezes.  “We love you, and we love your pancakes in their melty chocolatey glory, and we are very, very grateful and please keep feeding us.”

“No one likes a brown-noser, kid.”  He swats at her, which she cheerfully ignores.  “Consider your asses warned.”

Two months ago, this conversation would not have been possible.

“Oh, hey, I got a message back from Pamela, too.”

“Wow, she’s speaking to us?”

“Kind of?  She said, quote, ‘Thanks for the offer, but keep your tight little buns out of my house.  I’ll take that sigil, but send the cuties with the swords to paint it on.’”

“Classy as always.”

Charlie pauses.  “Wait, what?”

“Us?” Jo asks, glancing at Charlie and back.  “How does she even--”

“Psychic,” Sam and Dean chorus.

“Another one?  Sweet.”

“So what’d you do to her?”

“Nothing!”

“Dean.”  Sam sighs.  “We sort of got her stabbed while she was helping us this one time.  She almost died.  We didn’t part on the best terms.”

“Suffice to say she ain’t a fan.  How ‘bout it, kiddos?  Take a little field trip?”

“Dibs on the red one!” Jo blurts so fast that even Charlie is impressed.

“Oh, _hell_ no, those cars are classics, you can’t--”

“Fine, then we’ll take one of the motorcycles.”

Ellen huffs a laugh.  “You most certainly will not, Joanna Beth.”

Slyly, “So we get the red one?”

They’re probably not going to get the red one, and Charlie’s pretty sure she wouldn’t survive a motorcycle trip plastered up against Jo anyway, even if they did technically get there and back alive.  She’s betting on Ellen’s trusty pickup truck.  But that’s okay.

There are footsteps coming up the stairs, and then the kitchen is all greetings and hugs and introductions with bonus teenage awkwardness trailing behind.  Jody hugs Sam and Dean, and they both look about twenty years younger for a second.  She calls Alex over from the corner she’d slunk to with her phone, and looks pointedly at her until she introduces herself.  Jody shakes Ellen’s hand, and something in the room shifts, and Charlie is reasonably certain that was the feeling of the kitchen’s Badassery Level clicking up to eleven.

Allies, Charlie thinks.  They have allies.  They have friends.  Family.  And it’s still growing, and she’s going to help it keep growing.  If that isn’t a worthy quest, she doesn’t know what is.

It started with the bunker’s magic Narnia door, and it hasn’t stopped yet.

**Author's Note:**

> The Ladies:  
> [Charlie Bradbury](http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/2013/05/Supernatural-Charlie-pac-man-fever.jpg)  
> [Jo Harvelle](http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c215/meganbmoore/supernatural/supernatural2.65.jpg)  
> [Ellen Harvelle](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/images/3/31/Ellen.jpg)  
> [Jody Mills](http://www.withanaccent.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Supernatural-s9-ep08-Jody-Mills.png)  
> [Annie "Alex" Jones](https://fangasmthebook.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/xxx-9-19-kat.jpg?w=600)
> 
> Also Mentioned:  
> [Tracy Bell](http://super-natural.hu/sites/default/files/tracy-bell.png)  
> [Missouri Moseley](http://www.thewinchesterfamilybusiness.com/images/100%20Guests/Missouri.jpg)  
> [Pamela Barnes](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/images/2/25/PamelaBarnes.jpg)  
> [Linda Tran](https://samanddeanbrothersinarms.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/75f0d-lindatran.jpg?w=541&h=305)


End file.
